Real people. Real stories. Real lives.

﻿August 3, 2015 B﻿y Thomas Jay Kemp﻿FamilySearch recently announced it is working with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society and the California African American Museum to crowd source the online indexing of 1.5 million Freedman’s Bureau records that FamilySearch has put online.This is a great resource to start learning about African Americans in early American history. Is it possible to find out more about them – the actual stories of their individual lives? Can we know what happened to each one? . . .

In some cases, yes – we can.There are two key sources for these stories.

NewspapersSome of these stories can be found in old newspapers. GenealogyBank’s 1.8 billion stories are available – with unlimited downloads – at a nominal monthly or annual fee, making them easily available to genealogists everywhere.

As the nation grew so did newspapers – and newspapers recorded and preserved our stories.In newspapers we can learn the story of 79-year-old “Uncle Reuben” Taylor who grew up a slave on a farm near Baltimore, Maryland, was freed in 1863, and launched his career over the next 57 years delivering coal in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The Patriot (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) 31 December 1920, page 7, tells us that he then retired to live with his daughter in Chicago.Dig in and find your ancestors’ stories in GenealogyBank’s newspaper vault, with papers dating from 1690 to today’s date.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938The Library of Congress has digitized and put online the collection of all 2,300+ first-person interviews with former slaves that were conducted by the Federal Writers’ Project from 1936-1938.

These one-on-one interviews are invaluable.These typescripts retain the tone of the person being interviewed. Reading the pages, you quickly can “hear” them speaking to you today.Robert Bryant lived in Herculaneum, Mississippi – here is his story. Find his story – and the story of thousands of others in this online collection.

Real people. Real stories. Real lives.These stories give you the opportunity to glimpse the life of a slave – as told one story at a time.Get to know them – read and experience their stories.Sources:Source #1: Slave cabin. Source: Library of Congress. Source #2 Source: GenealogyBank.com Source #3 Source: Library of Congress Source #4 Source: Library of CongressThomas Jay Kemp is the Director of Genealogy Products at GenealogyBank. Tom is an internationally known librarian and archivist. He is the author of over 35 genealogy books and hundreds of articles about genealogy and family history. An active genealogist, he has been working on his own family history for over 50 years.Tom previously served as the Chair of the National Council of Library & Information Associations (Washington, D.C.) and as Library Director of both the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the New England Historic Genealogical Society.